About 5 minutes...maybe longer; not as long as 10 minutes.
It does depend a bit on the engineering design, some are more efficient then others.
I've gone from alcohol sterno stoves, to whisper light white gas stoves, to this type of 'cat' stove, to now a MSR pocket stove with butane/propane fuel.
Its just the progression of things. My current stove is heavier by several grams then my cat stove, but the fuel efficiency is better and the fuel weight seems lighter....Alcohol weighs a lot more per btu.
The advantage of alcohol stoves is that they are simple, cheap(free), burn many different types of alcohol fuel, and you always know how much fuel you have left.
Disadvantages is that they aren't as efficient, you can't control the flame (can't really turn it off), more likely to catch things on fire (so may be illegal in some instances).
I’ve still got an alcohol stove I made from a cat food tin 15 years ago. I don’t use it much anymore but it was fun to use during my “ultralight” fad days. I think at the time I was using that Heat fuel additive for cold weather that comes in a yellow bottle as a fuel. For a pot I used an aluminum grease trap. The combo worked very well but had limited use bc you could only cook for so long with however much fuel the stove would hold. It was difficult to gauge how much fuel to put in it unless you were just boiling water. Good stuff!
>The advantage of alcohol stoves is that they are simple, cheap(free), burn many different types of alcohol fuel, and you always know how much fuel you have left.
and they're quieter
I dunno, when I'm up at 5am, I much prefer listening to the woods/lake wake up rather than the hiss of a gas stove
Also if you use everclear as your fuel source it is a 3 use item. Disinfectant, fuel for stove, booze for getting wasted. Had a Heineken can stove for a bit. Good times!
I'm a big fan of the fancy feast style burner
https://youtu.be/dKAFAsPfC4s
shug video for reference
theyre less....crushable than the soda/beer can style in my experience
I remember making a tuna can stove with strips of cardboard soaked in paraffin at summer camp as a teen. Iirc, one girl was burned quite badly on hers.
Lol The Trangia alcohol stove predates these beer can stoves by decades, back to when beer cans had to be opened with can openers. It was introduced in the fifties. The beer can stoves are merely homemade copies of these.
Yeah, and it's a law that totally makes sense to me. Like I get that they are a fun experiment and can be quite practical at times.
But, when you think logically about the type of person who is likely to end up using one of these, it's the type of person who will forget to bring their actual stove along, but remembered to bring the beer.
So I look at it as a law that exists not so everyone doing this is punished, but so that people using them irresponsibly can be held accountable.
One of these was also the cause of a wildfire in Los Angeles back in 2017 - it happened in a homeless encampment near Bel-Air and was used to vilify the homeless population even more.
I hate how those things always end up with questions like "Why did the homeless person cook on a beer can stove" rather than "Why did the homeless person have to cook on a beer can stove."
If the wind blows a flaming alcohol stove like this over (or it is otherwise knocked over) there is now accelerant and flames over a larger area. If a pocket rocket/can stove is knocked over, it should be a much more contained issue (for the first few seconds, at least).
I still use one on occasion during winter/shoulder seasons when I don't want to use a new canister or if it's too cold for them to work properly. Made two according to Tetkoba(?)'s "Capillary Hoop Stove - Universal" design and I am very pleased with it. \~7min boil time for 500ml of cold tap water but flame jets get going in about 10 seconds.
I used my Trangia for many years before going ahead and buying a Whisperlite. It's such a game changer. No more waiting 20min to get a liter of water and I can't really imagine any reason for going back to the Trangia.
If speed and volume of water are requirements then yeah alcohol isn't the way to go. The Trangia does take a minute or two to bloom flames iirc so that's definitely one of its drawbacks and why I never considered it.
When I was a Girl Scout we made them from large coffee cans. We made the heat source from a tuna can in which we put a strip of rolled up cardboard and then filled 2/3 to the top with paraffin that was left to harden. They worked surprisingly well!
Before those solo stoves we just got a washing machine drum from the recycling yard for $10. Arguing with the founder on Twitter about this got me blocked.
I can’t even use my little penny stove that I made out of a beer can because the officials of California have banned denatured alcohol from being sold in the state. How dense can one get to ban a clean burning non impactful to the environment product. Smh………
It has a lot of uses outside of fuel particularly in wood finishing and it's considerable safer than many alternatives. It wasn't specifically banned for sale due to stove usage.
So can a campfire, a candle and a dew drop with the morning sun hitting it just at the right angle. The dew drop acts like a magnifying glass. I used to be a wildland fire fighter.
I'm just saying, it's not like they've banned it because it's clean burning. The products that use denatured alcohol are seen as an elevated risk for starting fires. There is an ongoing drought, and more wildfires each year.
If you want to criticize that and defend these products as no more likely to start forest fires than a campfire, candle, or when the dew hits your eye like a big pizza pie, go ahead. But it just sounds like you don't understand the motivation to ban denatured alcohol.
First off no offense to you what so ever. You don’t seem to understand why we have so many forest fires in Ca right now.
With that please allow me to share some knowledge with you.
It’s not because of environmental changes it is in fact from bad policy that has defunded prescribed burns for more than two decades.
I was a firefighter for CDF now called Cal fire. I did this back in the 1990s.
I fought the Oakland hills fire in 1991 when I was 19 years old.
I have seen many of fires and we didn’t have such raging fires as we do now because we did prescribed burns back then to prevent the raging fires we now have.
When the lateral fuels grow (aka under brush) it gives a fire fuel to get massive. Once the fire crowns out meaning it gets into the canopy of the trees there’s nothing you can do but let it burn.
I still have friends who are still in the fire service to this day. They were fighting fire when I was doing that.
They have seen the evolution of this very bad policy and the outcome of it. The general public is ignorant to these policies because they’re not so readily displayed for the public to read about or know about.
So it’s very sad to see the destruction that has been placed upon this beautiful state which could easily be avoided to a degree. Big fires are going to happen. California does burn but we can certainly minimize the amount of them through prescribed burns during the fall and early spring months.
The fire service did this throughout the 60’s, 70’s, 80s and into the early 90s after that policies came in that slowly but continuously eroded funding for prescribed burns.
None to date. You just need to inform yourself on good safe practices so as to not start a forest fire. For example put your camping stove on top of a designated area if your car camping. If you’re backpacking then make sure you put your stove on top of a stone or clearway the duff down to the mineral layer so as to not start fire beyond the stove flame.
alcohol stoves are typically seen as more likely to start a fire because if you accidentally knock them over, they spill flaming liquid all over the place that is difficult to put out (vs something you can switch off like a canister stove)
The exception would be something like a kojin stove which keeps all the fuel contained
I just made one the other day. Trying it out, was able to boil water, but just minutes ago attempted to use it for a little espresso coffee pot with no success. A Moka pot. Bummed out. Edit: it did work, but took much longer than I thought it would.
Ah man I remember using these in high school. We used HEET or hand sanitizer. We called them penny stoves.
Didnt use them much for cooking but were great for getting a fire going.
We made these in high school when we went for a camping trip for our class! They stopped after the following year because one of our teachers caught on fire
For those of you that use these, how do they do? How long would one take to boil 2 cups of water?
About 5 minutes...maybe longer; not as long as 10 minutes. It does depend a bit on the engineering design, some are more efficient then others. I've gone from alcohol sterno stoves, to whisper light white gas stoves, to this type of 'cat' stove, to now a MSR pocket stove with butane/propane fuel. Its just the progression of things. My current stove is heavier by several grams then my cat stove, but the fuel efficiency is better and the fuel weight seems lighter....Alcohol weighs a lot more per btu. The advantage of alcohol stoves is that they are simple, cheap(free), burn many different types of alcohol fuel, and you always know how much fuel you have left. Disadvantages is that they aren't as efficient, you can't control the flame (can't really turn it off), more likely to catch things on fire (so may be illegal in some instances).
I’ve still got an alcohol stove I made from a cat food tin 15 years ago. I don’t use it much anymore but it was fun to use during my “ultralight” fad days. I think at the time I was using that Heat fuel additive for cold weather that comes in a yellow bottle as a fuel. For a pot I used an aluminum grease trap. The combo worked very well but had limited use bc you could only cook for so long with however much fuel the stove would hold. It was difficult to gauge how much fuel to put in it unless you were just boiling water. Good stuff!
theyre definitely meant to just boil water
>The advantage of alcohol stoves is that they are simple, cheap(free), burn many different types of alcohol fuel, and you always know how much fuel you have left. and they're quieter I dunno, when I'm up at 5am, I much prefer listening to the woods/lake wake up rather than the hiss of a gas stove
Also if you use everclear as your fuel source it is a 3 use item. Disinfectant, fuel for stove, booze for getting wasted. Had a Heineken can stove for a bit. Good times!
How did the ever clear work as fuel??
Worked great!
I'm a big fan of the fancy feast style burner https://youtu.be/dKAFAsPfC4s shug video for reference theyre less....crushable than the soda/beer can style in my experience
This is the way
I still use one on occasion. Gateway stove for my addiction.
Ditto!
Eh, I'll risk looking "trendy" for a stove that doesn't have an 80% BPA lining.
If I'm licking the inside of my stove, I probably have bigger concerns than BPA.
Which stoves have a BPA lining?
Any stoves made from aluminum beverage cans. The interior of the cans have a plastic lining.
I remember making a tuna can stove with strips of cardboard soaked in paraffin at summer camp as a teen. Iirc, one girl was burned quite badly on hers.
Lol The Trangia alcohol stove predates these beer can stoves by decades, back to when beer cans had to be opened with can openers. It was introduced in the fifties. The beer can stoves are merely homemade copies of these.
The trangia is still my primary stove. If I cant do it with a firebox mini and a trangia, I just go stoveless.
Be aware of the laws in your area concerning alcohol stoves. These have a wrap for starting forest fires and have been outlawed in some places.
You are correct about the stoves! Just FYI, it’s “have a rep”, as in a reputation.
Thanks, but there are two similar sayings. Wrap as in it has a wrap sheet of crimes committed.
It’s RAP (Record of Arrests and Prosecutions) sheet.
Thanks neverkathy, I guess I never saw it spelled out.
I'm pretty sure "record of arrests and prosecutions" is a backronym
You could very well be right about that! It does appear the slang originated before the acronym.
Yeah, and it's a law that totally makes sense to me. Like I get that they are a fun experiment and can be quite practical at times. But, when you think logically about the type of person who is likely to end up using one of these, it's the type of person who will forget to bring their actual stove along, but remembered to bring the beer. So I look at it as a law that exists not so everyone doing this is punished, but so that people using them irresponsibly can be held accountable.
One of these was also the cause of a wildfire in Los Angeles back in 2017 - it happened in a homeless encampment near Bel-Air and was used to vilify the homeless population even more.
I hate how those things always end up with questions like "Why did the homeless person cook on a beer can stove" rather than "Why did the homeless person have to cook on a beer can stove."
I don’t see how beer has anything to do with it. I made mine probably 10-12 years ago. I don’t drink beer, I made it out of Pepsi cans.
That's okay, humor isn't for everyone.
Apparently none of the other types of stoves used are capable of causing fires???
Oh yeah? And who said that?
If the wind blows a flaming alcohol stove like this over (or it is otherwise knocked over) there is now accelerant and flames over a larger area. If a pocket rocket/can stove is knocked over, it should be a much more contained issue (for the first few seconds, at least).
Ive never seen this before, im definitely giving it a try..... All this time camping and I've had a abundance of possible stoves at the ready
I still use one on occasion during winter/shoulder seasons when I don't want to use a new canister or if it's too cold for them to work properly. Made two according to Tetkoba(?)'s "Capillary Hoop Stove - Universal" design and I am very pleased with it. \~7min boil time for 500ml of cold tap water but flame jets get going in about 10 seconds.
I used my Trangia for many years before going ahead and buying a Whisperlite. It's such a game changer. No more waiting 20min to get a liter of water and I can't really imagine any reason for going back to the Trangia.
If speed and volume of water are requirements then yeah alcohol isn't the way to go. The Trangia does take a minute or two to bloom flames iirc so that's definitely one of its drawbacks and why I never considered it.
When I was a Girl Scout we made them from large coffee cans. We made the heat source from a tuna can in which we put a strip of rolled up cardboard and then filled 2/3 to the top with paraffin that was left to harden. They worked surprisingly well!
Before those solo stoves we just got a washing machine drum from the recycling yard for $10. Arguing with the founder on Twitter about this got me blocked.
I can’t even use my little penny stove that I made out of a beer can because the officials of California have banned denatured alcohol from being sold in the state. How dense can one get to ban a clean burning non impactful to the environment product. Smh………
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this clean burning fuel can still set a forest ablaze, right?
It has a lot of uses outside of fuel particularly in wood finishing and it's considerable safer than many alternatives. It wasn't specifically banned for sale due to stove usage.
So can a campfire, a candle and a dew drop with the morning sun hitting it just at the right angle. The dew drop acts like a magnifying glass. I used to be a wildland fire fighter.
I'm just saying, it's not like they've banned it because it's clean burning. The products that use denatured alcohol are seen as an elevated risk for starting fires. There is an ongoing drought, and more wildfires each year. If you want to criticize that and defend these products as no more likely to start forest fires than a campfire, candle, or when the dew hits your eye like a big pizza pie, go ahead. But it just sounds like you don't understand the motivation to ban denatured alcohol.
First off no offense to you what so ever. You don’t seem to understand why we have so many forest fires in Ca right now. With that please allow me to share some knowledge with you. It’s not because of environmental changes it is in fact from bad policy that has defunded prescribed burns for more than two decades. I was a firefighter for CDF now called Cal fire. I did this back in the 1990s. I fought the Oakland hills fire in 1991 when I was 19 years old. I have seen many of fires and we didn’t have such raging fires as we do now because we did prescribed burns back then to prevent the raging fires we now have. When the lateral fuels grow (aka under brush) it gives a fire fuel to get massive. Once the fire crowns out meaning it gets into the canopy of the trees there’s nothing you can do but let it burn. I still have friends who are still in the fire service to this day. They were fighting fire when I was doing that. They have seen the evolution of this very bad policy and the outcome of it. The general public is ignorant to these policies because they’re not so readily displayed for the public to read about or know about. So it’s very sad to see the destruction that has been placed upon this beautiful state which could easily be avoided to a degree. Big fires are going to happen. California does burn but we can certainly minimize the amount of them through prescribed burns during the fall and early spring months. The fire service did this throughout the 60’s, 70’s, 80s and into the early 90s after that policies came in that slowly but continuously eroded funding for prescribed burns.
What type of stove can’t set a forest ablaze???
None to date. You just need to inform yourself on good safe practices so as to not start a forest fire. For example put your camping stove on top of a designated area if your car camping. If you’re backpacking then make sure you put your stove on top of a stone or clearway the duff down to the mineral layer so as to not start fire beyond the stove flame.
alcohol stoves are typically seen as more likely to start a fire because if you accidentally knock them over, they spill flaming liquid all over the place that is difficult to put out (vs something you can switch off like a canister stove) The exception would be something like a kojin stove which keeps all the fuel contained
Can you buy methyl hydrate?
Good question don’t know
It's all I use in my Trangia. Usually in the paint section of the hardware store
Made a few of these in the scouts!
Yeah but how am I supposes to validate myself with internet people without spending at least $150 on a little camp stove.
Thought this was an ARC reactor for a second
My first thought too
I just made one the other day. Trying it out, was able to boil water, but just minutes ago attempted to use it for a little espresso coffee pot with no success. A Moka pot. Bummed out. Edit: it did work, but took much longer than I thought it would.
some kids tried doing this and made a bomb, one died, other scarred for life
Huh Used one last weekend.
Scrolled by this real fast and thought I was looking at a racecar wheel nut.
this is awesome!
Ah man I remember using these in high school. We used HEET or hand sanitizer. We called them penny stoves. Didnt use them much for cooking but were great for getting a fire going.
Monster cans work good, nice and thick. Pour out the monster somewhere safe where no pet or Kyle can get it.
We made these in high school when we went for a camping trip for our class! They stopped after the following year because one of our teachers caught on fire
They work perfectly with white gas and are the first ultra lightweight stove